Widescreen woes

Full_Circle

This is just a general rant about widescreen and how the aspect ratio of programmes is treated on different channels.

Most tv shows nowadays are filmed in widescreen (to varying degrees), so it wrecks my head that nearly all channels cut the sides off the picture so they can broadcast it in the regular 4:3 ratio (its very obvious in shows like “Lost” when even the actors names are half missing from the screen). :mad: Does this bother anyone else???

As a compromise, I’d rather have the black borders at the top and the bottom. Ideally though, I would prefer if shows were actually broadcast in widescreen, which looks stretched normally and requires a TV to be changed to its “widescreen” setting. This, as far as I’m concerned, is the only way to get a proper widescreen picture on a widescreen tv (or on regular telly with black borders enforced) without losing anything. I was reminded of this when last night Channel 6 kindly broadcasted “The Closer” in this setting, and it was a joy to see the program in it full widescreen glory. However, Channel 6 are also guilty of showing a lot of their music videos in a strange squashed ratio, which no TV setting can fix (as there is no way to stretch the squashed picture).

Would getting Digital from NTL or Sky sort out all my niggling issues??? Am I just a dumbwit who is missing the obvious solution?

(By the way, if this should have been entered into one of the “tech” forums instead of the television one, I do apologise and moderators feel free to move it! )

grimm2005

im not an expert on the issue but most channels i watch on sky digital are broadcast in widescreen, wearas the same channel on ntl analogue is in the 4:3 format

Yakuza

Get digital TV, and you will be able to see all your content in wide screen and you'll be able to hear it in 5.1 stereo too (filling the screen on my 16:9 tv).

The Sky One channel ID (DOG?) is quite a bit over from the left hand margin, giving you an idea what gets cut off when they refit it for 4:3 / analogue tranmission.

Older material will still display in 4:3 (with bars on left ad right - my TV adjusts itself accordingly depending on the format being broadcast).

Annoyingly enough, though, the SciFi channel (on NTL digital anyway) seems to broadcast in 4:3 only (even if it's recent material, Heroes or Firefly for example).

Full_Circle

Thanks folks for the replies, you've given me a reason to go digital!

Wertz

I'm a recent arrival to Sky and I'm shocked and a bit miffed at the amount of channels that still output in 4:3. With the exception of the UK/Irish terrestrials, Sky123, the movies channels and some other exceptions EVERYTHING is in f*cking 4:3. Like Yakuza my TV detects it and zooms in to fill screen in poper aspect but you loosetop and bottom and end up with a grainier picture as it zooms. I realise a lot of repeats channels may be showing almost exclusive 4:3 content but I've often seen where a WS programme has been chopped and cropped into 4:3 and then broadcast on a channel that normally caters for WS signals. With the tech available nowadays why is this still the case? Surely 2 signals could be used or a similar method so that WS owners are fully catered for, instead of just oututting legacy formats...

lodgepole

Analogue NTL will do this, switching to digital will solve your widescreen problems. However, a lot of content will still be broadcast as 4:3. In theory, your digital box should know the difference between the 4:3 image and the 16:9 image (as should Sky, before they transmit the signal) and your TV should switch accordingly.

Channel 6 is broadcast 16:9 and looks fine on digital, NTL really do a number on it. I presume this is down to the aspect ratio information being lost somewhere along the line between London and Dublin (it gets transmitted from there).

I'm not sure if i'd describe 4:3 as a legacy format quite yet... A large amount of content is still created in it, and in fact the bulk of American television remains full screen.

Mossy Monk

Really annoys me that the UKTV channels especially aren't widescreen. It is 99% BBC content which was made for widescreen.